• Demand 35 pc parliamentary and 40 pc provincial seats under FPTP system

Kathmandu, October 8 The Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal and the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal today claimed 35 per cent parliamentary and 40 per cent of provincial constituencies under the First-Past-the-Post electoral system. The two parties made these claims with Nepali Congress leaders who represent the party in the six-party task force formed to expedite formation of a democratic alliance. Multiple sources privy to the developments, said the FSF-N and RJP-N jointly demanded that they be allotted 35 per cent of parliamentary constituencies, which comes to over 58 seats, under the FPTP system. Similarly, these two parties demanded 40 per cent of provincial FPTP constituencies or 132 seats. There are 165 parliamentary constituencies and 330 provincial constituencies. Sources said that these two parties gave a detailed description of the constituencies that they demanded and almost all the constituencies were in the Tarai districts with most of them in Province 2. FSF-N leader Ram Sahay Yadav and RJP-N leader Sarvendranath Shukla  held discussion with three NC leaders — Bimalendra Nidhi, Purna Bahadur Khadka and Minendra Rijal, who represent the NC in the task force. Yadav and Shukla, however, refused to divulge details of the discussion. Yadav said the FSF-N and the RJP-N were jointly demanding FPTP constituencies and once the constituents of the democratic alliance agreed on the formula, then the FSF-N and the RJP-N would divide the seats among them. Shukla said the vote share of the alliance partners should be the basis of constituency division. “As far as Province 2 is concerned, the combined vote share of FSF-N and RJP-N in the recently concluded local polls is about 550,000 followed by NC’s 450,000, CPN-UML’s 325,000 and the CPN-Maoist Centre’s 300,000. If we forge alliance with the NC then the combined share of votes will be almost a million,” Shukla said and added that the allotment of constituencies should correspond their vote share.